One thing I like about maps is how they reflect a decision on what one decides is important to look at. I can map out the color of doors in my neighborhood, or the types of bird sounds in a state park at different times of the day. I like how I can change perspective by looking on a micro level- examining minute details of grains, and then zoom out on a large scale macro level. I can move between the two perspectives. I like how the information can be presented without conclusions. The decisions involved in making the map become the answers.

I like how we create maps in our minds as part of the way we remember, how we decide to group and categorize experiences. We create our own internal maps of self and history. I like how these maps are active. They change alongside us as we (mis)remember what happened in our lives.

Our map:

In this collaboration with Joseph Kudirka and Koen Nutters, my initial intention was to explore and share the ways that we, as listeners and performers, categorize and remember. This journal entry is a map of our collective collaboration investigating the relationships between reading, listening, hearing and remembering. The collection of pieces, performances, memories, and written testimonials, map out our investigation, which, in turn, become our response.

The questions are part of the map. Ourselves and the works explored are part of the map. The discussions we had are part of the map. The map provides answers by revealing how we remembered our experience of the search, which is precisely what we want to understand. The map becomes an outward manifestation of our distinct internal experiences. Our map in this journal is seemingly static but becomes active through it’s diffusion. The map is generative as readers interact with materials, creating their own internal maps. It is in these meeting points where internal and external collide, that knowledge becomes alive.

Bios:

Joseph Kudirka is a composer and performer of experimental music. He studied composition with Michael Pisaro, Alan Stout, James Tenney, and Bryn Harrison, receiving degrees from Northwestern University (BM), the California Institute of the Arts (MFA), and the University of Huddersfield (PhD).

His works employ and explore the detritus of both the physical and cultural materials of music.

As a contrabassist, he has premiered works by numerous composers, including Antoine Beuger, Michael Maierhoff, and Eva-Maria Houben.

He also sometimes makes installations, sings songs, and thinks about living on a spaceship full of cats and whiskey.

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, in 1978, he has since also been a legal resident of the UK, Switzerland, and Germany.

Koen Nutters’ work as a composer, arranger, writer and musician encompasses numerous highly respected collaborations including: The Pitch, Konzert Minimal, The New Silence, Mammoth and the Amsterdam-based performance collective: DNK Ensemble. As an organizer he is responsible for 10 years of quality, world-wide avant-garde music in Amsterdam working with the DNK-Amsterdam concert series. He currently travels between Berlin and Amsterdam engaging in many, various, forms of music and musical organization.